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European Commission Annoyed With Data Logging by U.S. Search Sites

It’ll be two months until regulators within the European Commission responsible for issues concerning data protection will hold a hearing with U.S.-based search engines with reference to data retention timelines.

But already those with the job of oversight are expressing frustration with services - Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft in particular - which have so far failed to comply with a limit set earlier this year. The EC demands that they implement a six-months-then-delete program. The Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., meanwhile, is only projected to issue voluntary guidelines on the matter.

Kevin J. O’Brien of the International Herald Tribune quotes French data protection chief as saying that, “For the moment, Google refuses to submit to European data protection law.” Which irks those services operating in the EU which do in fact comply with EC regulations. One of them being Ixquick, a service featured here this summer.

Ixquick claims a query deletion process of just 48 hours. Google, on the other hand, pledges to do so within 9 months (down from an 18-month standard as of last month), while Yahoo holds information for 13 months and Microsoft for 18. In light of this disparity, Ixquick CEO Robert Beens said, “...the value of the information we derive for advertisers is not as great as that of our competitors, who use the extra time to develop more detailed profiles. We have a slight competitive disadvantage as a result.”

Google is expecting to see a compromise when the December meeting with European regulators, who coin themselves the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, rolls around. And EU telecom and media commissioner Viviane Reding is evidently also hoping to see progress made. She made plain her thinking that Google and the rest of the U.S.-based operators in question should be the ones to move in the EC’s stead. In Reding’s words: “...the European regulations are there for everybody. In our internal market, we have to have rules so that there is a level playing field. It is very clear that European laws have to be applied.”

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